Experimental electronic composer Jan St. Werner (Mouse On Mars, Lithops, Microstoria) and Ensemble neoN collaborate on an unconventional performance format that includes new compositions, improvisation, spatial arrangements and interventions from Werner’s class in Dynamic Acoustic Research, which he leads at Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts. For two days, Ensemble neoN will take up residence at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter and a space will open up in which a mass of different audio practices will be exercised. Dynamic Acoustic Research is a radical course of investigation into post-war contemporary music, psychoacoustics and unconventional methods of capturing and producing sound and music. Periodic Composite Waveform Environment explores sound as an unstable art form and pushes players to the limits of their capacities.

Dissolve Music @ MIT is a two-and-a-half-day conference and sound festival, March 7-9, 2018, to bring together musicians, sound creators, and scholars of music and sound studies to discuss the diversity of music and experimental sound. Combining art and scholarship in a spirit of dialogue and controversy, the conference aims to dissolve boundaries between different arenas of sonic engagement to identify paths towards alternative, more inclusive futures.

Jan St. Werner summons flux and fragmentation on Spectric Acid, building up the record’s blistering, locomotive beat structures around the correlation of musical spectra. Their movements triggered in part by peaks in frequency envelopes, rhythms buckle and fracture according to a complex logic that slides past aural perception and harmonic resolution; a “phenomenological alchemy” (Rădulescu) takes shape among unsteady synthesizer whirls and stammering percussive phrases. The effect is deadly, paralytic; but listeners willing to surrender to Spectric Acid’s movement might find themselves taken to wider horizons of trance. Crucially, Werner turned also to the ceremonial rhythms of West Africa in his shaping of Spectric Acid’s bending timescales, and one can hear a clear impress of Vodoo drumming in the way rhythmic patterns cross converse, teeter off-beat, and rapidly redouble.

Though it shares with 2016’s Felder(Fiepblatter Catalogue #4) a desire to spill beyond metric linearity and notated time, Spectric Acid strays from that record’s breathy spatiality towards more pointed concerns with motion and the liberation of rhythm. In pursuit of this new direction, Werner borrows, on the one hand, from the structural techniques championed by the Spectralist school of the 1970s; breaking free of the tempered system through a focus on frequency and timbre, spectral composers like Gérard Grisey and Horațiu Rădulescu introduced sweeping, tectonic temporalities untroubled by notes and intervals, refining what Edgard Varèse before them had evangelized as a fragmentary, atomistic approach to form given to a “[constant] changing in shape, directions, and speed.”

A record both brute in force and exacting in its sensitivity to perception’s effective limits, Spectric Acidoffers fresh glimpses of the deft compositional grasp Werner has developed across over two decades of practice, whether in Mouse on Mars and Microstoria or on his growing log of solo records. Treat it less as a document than a potent sonic distillate, to be taken on an empty stomach for full effect.

– Walker Peterson Downey

Spectric Acid is released on CD only in a hand-numbered edition of 300 copies with an 8 page 5” x 7” booklet designed by Rupert Smyth (co-founder of YYAA Recordings and Hallso Press Editions). Spectric Acid was mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering in Berlin. Becker said the intense nature of the album meant that to master for LP would “mutilate the spectrum and phase of the material”

Project based class taught by Jan St. Werner at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg Germany. DAF explores sound as an unstable art form which merges with other disciplines and yet makes strong claims for disciplinary autonomy. A critical awareness is developed of how sound as a field for artistic exploration is performed, produced, and distributed.

The class explores contemporary and historical practices that emerge outside of purely musical environments and investigates specific compositional developments of post-war modernity and electro-acoustic music, as well as non-musical disciplines related to the psychophysics of hearing and listening. Sound is understood as a means of artistic exploration through practical exercises, performances, installations, writing, recordings, diffusions and instruments building.

In Dynamic Acoustic Research a sound that is perceived – or rather thought – in front of or behind the inner ear, is regarded as equivalent to audible sound. The tool for that is a focus shift of the acoustic range: to search and explore with un-, over- and transdisciplinary methods as a performative self-experiment and with a permanently self-modifying interest, that has no rigidly defined program. Composition is conceived as a finding with maximum attentiveness involving all affects of the perception process.

By means of the concept of the hearing in front of or behind the inner ear a »multi-perspectivity« is applied to the act of hearing – i.e. a sonic art that does not only take place in the ear, but that also makes use of intensive hearing and listening inwards and outwards. In order to achieve this »inter-est« is the matrix of reception in the future: As an artist I will have to ask myself to what extent I am able to invest my inter-est – understood as an intellectual effort – in a structural documentation of real and discursive sounds, for missed, unheard, and outrageous things. How far can we differentiate this inter-est?

Lead by passions (affect, emotion, sensation) and the [calculating] deliberations (intention, reflection, purposefulness). In our researching experiments passions and deliberations should be brought into resonance – an inter-est in the in-between: between the others, the sounds and the devices. For all this Prof. Jan St. Werner favours an interest on the part of the students in a collective process of learning in order to explore something unknown – something undetermined.

Until now the class for Interactive Media / Dynamic Acoustic Research has published a record entitled DAF01. During the Jahresausstellung 2017sounds arose at the campus were recorded and simultaneously analysed, filtered, interconnected, arranged. By using a mixing desk the students created their individually interpreted melody of the Jahresausstellung. The record sold by A-Musik is also available upon request (akstaller@adbk-nuernberg.de). There is also a cassette tape DAF02 and a print publication DAF03.

Furthermore, the class for Interactive Media / Dynamic Acoustic Research has established a radio station transmitting acoustical experiments. It can be received online via http://81.169.184.35/

Glottal Wolpertinger (multi-fragmented composition, commission for documenta 14, 2017)
Jan St. Werner, composition, computer
Aaron Dessner, guitar
Bryce Dessner, prerecorded guitar
Glottal Wolpertinger deconstructs the principle of the musical drone, the timelessly dense, continuously spreading mass of sound, and uses idiosyncratic spatial movements to break with the linear narrative of music. Eight microtonally tuned feedback channels were broadcast via the documenta 14 Radio Program “Every Time A Ear Di Soun” for a period of ten weeks. On July 6, 2017, the feedback channels converged with each other during a performance of Jan St. Werner together with guitarists Aaron and Bryce Dessner in Athens. The eight compositional fragments each consisted of a continuously modulated feedback based on the harmonic spectrum of Glottal Wolpertinger. The feedback channels resonated at the tuning frequencies of 44 Hz, 133 Hz, 339 Hz, 527 Hz, 826 Hz, 1014 Hz, 1552 Hz, 1889 Hz, 2.3 kHz, 4.6 kHz, 7.15 kHz, 10.14 kHz, 14.873 kHz, and 29.45 kHz. The spatial configuration of these frequencies inside the Romantso space resulted in oscillations, binaural pulses, and sound artifacts that became more or less palpable during the course of the performance depending on the position of the listener. In this way traditional techniques of orientation in a musical experience were pushed beyond the limits of comprehension.

A 46 minute collage of the multiple incarnations of Glottal Wolptertinger was commissioned by Deutschlandfunk Kultur

A stereo version of Glottal Wolpertinger called Glossal Wolptertinger as a white CD-R with stamped date, white screen-printed cover on black card sleeve and printed insert plus a limited number of t-shirts and tote bags were released via farbvision.

“Felder” means “fields” in German, and here the word refers to conceptual frameworks and subjects, and sound fields. Werner is a cultivator — a farmer — of the various sounds, from metal scratched on a big glass window to piano phrases found on a private Popul Vuh compilation. He mixes organic sounds from French horns and cellos seamlessly with synthesized notes created with one-of-a-kind programs. Werner builds layers of sound with differing cadences upon one another, creating intricate patterns that connect with each other structurally, rhythmically, semantically, and historically. Suggestions of jazz, industrial music, drone and even folk float in and out of the electronic compositions in a seemingly effortless manner; paradoxically, Felder was meticulously constructed over the course of four years.

Werner’s refinement process for the pieces on Felder was simultaneous with the lofty goal of challenging himself as a musician while still creating a record that is melodic and complex. Werner recorded the album in Marfa, Texas; Berlin, and around the world while touring with Mouse on Mars. Just as the album’s creation and production cannot be tied to a specific setting or time, the sounds heard on the album have no clear boundaries. They are unexpectedly malleable and mutable. Context and perceptions play with sounds to yield a fresh new experience with each listen. Samples and instrumentals bounce off one another, starting from central points and radiating outwards. With so many new sounds to discover and new inspirations to be found, Felder is an entire new field of musical possibilities — a landscape that at first appears simple and beautiful that reveals its utter complexity upon closer inspection. The album is joyful experience for both the mind and the soul.

The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) is an academic program and hub of critical art practice and discourse. Through an integrated approach to pedagogy, hosting, public event programming, and publication, ACT builds a community of artist-thinkers around the exploration of art’s complex conjunctions with culture and technology. The program’s mission is to promote leadership in critical artistic practice and deployment, developing art as a vital means of experimenting with new registers of knowledge and new modes of valuation and expression; and to continually question what an artistic research and learning environment can be and do.

Jan St. Werner’s Kinetic Speakers And Experimental Sound Creations class defines sound as an unstable art form which merges with other disciplines and yet makes strong claims for disciplinary autonomy. A critical awareness is developed of how sound art as a field for artistic exploration is performed, produced, and distributed. Students explore contemporary and historical practices that emerge outside of purely musical environments and investigate specific compositional developments of post-war modernity and electro-acoustic music, as well as non-musical disciplines related to the psychophysics of hearing and listening. Lectures, screenings, readings, and discussions with guests and faculty contribute to the development of group and individual projects.

The singer Damo Suzuki, originally from Japan, was the singer of the band CAN from 1970 to 1973. He developed the improvised singing in psychedelic music, disappeared for ten years and began his own solo and network projects from 1983. Suzuki lives and works in Cologne until today. Together with Andi Toma, Jan St. Werner is the initiator of the band Band Mouse on Mars which was formed in 1993, then discovering a new connection to the avantgarde of the 1970ies and being one of the most important bands in electronic music ever since. Werner now lives and works in Berlin and operates in the most diverse musical collaborations (see Mouse on Mars: 21 again (2014)).

Beginning with Sigmar Polke’s 16mm films shown for the first time in the 1980ies, Museum Abteiberg presents in its halls an electro-acoustic concert consisting of several parts which combines Sigmar Polke’s sampled visual aesthetics, which have often been described as alchemy, with a contemporary acoustic counterpart. Damo Suzuki and Jan St. Werner present an electroacoustic composition which draws its procedures from the Krautrock and diverse form of improvisation in the 1970ies, using a range of sound materials, speech and noise, thereby presenting Polke’s process of cross-fading and multiple exposure as an acoustic procedure. Suzuki and Werner – which have never worked together before – practice an acoustic reflection which both moves within the system and makes an observation from outside at the same time. Experimenting with different materials and perspectives, this approach presents an interdisciplinary parallel to Polke: All material becomes a big picture, everything joins an alchemist mixture. Jan St. Werner: “There is no centre in this composition, the elements must be newly brought together again and again. What was just perceived and has faded is redrawn from memory and compared to the new. The image and after-image form a collage in the head as the actual composition.”

The central concept of Miscontinuum Album explores misconceptions of time and memory, inspired by unique acoustic phenomena derived through digital phasing and musical time stretching techniques. There is an aura of doom that pervades the work. Much of the album’s evocative nature comes from the interplay of Werner’s electronics with Alberici and Kawabe’s voices and the contrast between those organic and inorganic elements. Popp, a longtime collaborator with Werner in Microstoria, wrote the libretti, which are presented in five distinct scenes and recited redolently by Carlson. The surreal plot involves a progressive distinction of time as a force rather than a structuring system, where an individual who can shift consciously between states within that force. The high concepts and unusual creative partners combine for an album that is uncommonly emotionally resonant.

Miscontinuum was first performed as a part of Werner’s Asymmetric Studio series in Munich on June 18th, 2013, and also featured video by Werner and Karl Kliem and stage design by Christina del Yelmo & Sonia Gomez Villar. It was broadcast by Bayerischer Rundfunk BR2 public radio. The striking visual elements, flowing dresses and impressionistic masses of color, make appearances on the album’s art, and will be presented in new forms in the coming months. The first revised version of Miscontinuum featuring live video by Zoya Bassi premiered at the St Luke’s Church in London on Feb 8th 2015. The second performance was shown at Volksbühne Berlin on April 5th 2015.

Created by Jan St. Werner and Karl Kliem, this series of audio-visual compositions of constantly and subtly shifting antidromic sounds and images experiments visually and acoustically with Gestalt principles from the field of cognitive psychology, and triggers sensory irritation in the recipient.

Composed of 60 frames per second, the visual component of the “Rotationsstudien” uses complementary contrasts, sudden bursts of colour, and shifts from bright- to darkness to generate spatial effects that simultaneously give rise to new assemblages and undermine the viewer’s sense of reality. Same as the images, the installation’s sound component is completely digital in origin, and by means of granular resonance shifts, stereo movements, and phase changes prompts phantom perceptions. Every visitor listens to and sees a different installation. “Rotationsstudien” is a generative piece of abstract extended cinema, that runs for days without repetition.

Musician Jan St. Werner has created Molocular Meditation, a bespoke light and sound enviroment with a soundtrack featuring the voice of the Fall’s Mark E Smith. Smith is heard making observations on mundane objects, events and a range of meditation techniques. His voice forms the narrative component of an abstract electroacoustic composition placed in a surreal scenario evoking a state of transformation and deceleration.

The festival’s program of performances, sculptures, talks, and installations by 100 artists and contributors who have been part of the past five years of the Institut für Raumexperimente will be held in and around the exhibition “Sticks and Stones” by David Chipperfield, an intervention in dialogue with the architecture of Mies van der Rohe.

“The piece is 36 minutes in length and draws into itself a diverse range of sounds that Jan St. Werner has recorded during his stay in Marfa along with elements recorded elsewhere but which reasserted themselves in this place. The piece manages to be site specific, but without being orthodoxly so. The train is a representative element in that it contributes a significant aspect to the town, and to the piece, because it omes from elsewhere, appears and then returns to farther away.

“So did the poet Clark Coolidge appear; and musicians Primo Carrasco, Max and John Ferguson, Scott Hawkins and David Grubbs; so, too, the various anonymous visitors to the Marfa Lights’ Viewing Station and linguist Lynette Melnar; and almost everyone, including Jan and myself. Additionally, Jan has treated the radio event as a sculptural entity, one that can be cut from time and transferred, via recording to other times and places.

“As such, the piece, which will air on Marfa Public Radio this Wednesday, is marked by the station itself, and therefore by the people of this area, but this same marking will appear again on WDR 3 German Public Radio at some point in the future and for that performance, German Public Radio will be marked by Marfa.”

As the title Split Animal Sculpture suggests, this piece manages to sound simultaneously biotic and fabricated. An impressionistic rendering of church bells and organ drone is suggestive of a large man-made structure, while in-between can be heard the flutters and whistles of something animated navigating it’s way through the reverberating buzz. This circling and spatial piece illustrates St. Werner’s intelligent approach to creating sound that has both weight and aerodynamic energy. This record also exists as asound installation for a single listener using headphones and one speaker.

On “Mordendo” the dynamics of speaker compositions intertwine with concrete Afro-Brazilian sounds pattern, with special “toques”, drum beat sequences also found in Samba and Candomblé… Sounds rear up, diffuse, and rhythms dissolve into tones thereby creating a “total music”.

“Black Manual” was formed in 2012 after Jan St. Werner had heard the percussionists Valdir Jovenal, Juninho Quebradeira and Leo Leandro play at a Candomblé ceremony in Berlin Kreuzberg.

Together with his colleague Andi Toma, with whom Jan St. Werner had made a name as “Mouse on Mars”, he mixed this unholy conglomerate of frigidly staged disorders, digital fragments, samples, broken melodies and the vibrant, tugging sub-bass caprices of the Brazilian “voodoo” rhythms – “a fala dos atabaques” (“speech of the drums”): with violence and passion as if they were trying to force the gates to transcendence open.

A performance between concert and ceremony: When the three percussionists and Jan St. Werner really cut loose, challenging and tempting each other, then worlds collide making the earth tremble! Then the black Gods of Africa are also near as if they were amusing themselves or trying to dance with the Christian hallows… “O tempo é fora do comum!” Or: “The time is out of joint!”

“Blinded by political tongue twisting and the vacuum that is my deep pockets, this escapist piece is the first of the Island Universe Research works being generated. With the heavier words getting ready to weigh you down about the realities of breathing let this be the beginning of remembering that this is infinite.”
This first installment in the Island Universe Research imprint is a collaboration by Roberto C. Lange and Jan Werner. Light reflections and water movements designed the landscape for the visual while resonating strings and low steady swoons press against your ear drums like a pillow. Two brothers born as twins in different years this aligning of eyes is birthing new formations at a constant speed.
Motion Piece by Roberto C. Lange Sound and Music by Jan St. Werner
This is Island Universe Research / Motion Piece 001

First instalement of a new audiovisual series by Jan St. Werner with assistance of Karl Kliem on the occasion of Oswald Wiener’s symposium “Innenschau/Zusammenschau”, Sept. 16th/17th 2011, Kunsthaus Muerz, Austria.

“The sources for “Formationen” are early solo recordings produced with synthesizers and tapes in 1992 and 1993, during Werner’s collaborations with F.X.Randomiz and his first experiments with Andi Toma that should be released later under the alias Mouse on Mars. Werner found those early tapes a while ago, re-mastered and carefully re-worked them, and the result are four stunning pieces of beautiful electronic music.” limited vinyl edition of 300 copies. (a-musik)

A new composition for the ICA that uses the structure and daily sounds of the building. Arranging drones from harmoniums with soundpockets produced by ICA staff, the work exists throughout the ICA for one day. “Three players and three harmoniums are located in separate areas of the ICA. The sound of the first player who plays vibraphone is relayed to an amp in the room of the second player. The sound of the second player who plays guitar, and the sound of his amp, are relayed to player 3. Player 3- who is playing guitar, and the sound of his amp, are relayed to a fourth amp located at the entrance of the building. Every 15 minutes each player chooses one of a given number of note groups. Each player repeats the chosen note group three times. Player 1 starts every quarter of an hour. Player 2 joins in when player 1 is playing his note group for the second time. Player 3 joins in when player 2 is playing her note group for the second time.”

Score for an undefined number of cars on a highway to be performed until all actions are exercised. By Volker Hormann, Michael Rauter & Jan St. Werner. On the occasion of “Nordkurve”, Künstlerische Arbeiten am Ort der ehemaligen Autorennstrecke AVUS und heutigen Autobahn A115 Berlin kunstraum avus

sonig is an independent music label for experimental, electronic and non genre specific music. the artist roster is international and features bands, solo artists and art related music projects. sonig is based in cologne and shares offices with a-musik, the specialist shop, distributor and label for all kinds of outsider music. sonig is also running a mail order service and alternatively offers products through online stores such as itunes or amazon. sonig is run by frank dommert, jan st werner and andi toma.

a one octave micro keyboard with transpose up/down buttons and 8 rotary controllers. the travel controller uses a junxion board to translate controller data to a junxion software patch which generates midi. it is connected to a powerbook via usb. the travel controller was contrived by jan st werner and built by jorgen brinkmann at steim. size: 15,5 x 8 x 3 cm

The NOISEROOM is an autonomous surround sound installation built for pre-recorded musical works and sonic experiments. It is a musical deconstruction of a room-within-a-room as much as it is a sound studio sculpture. Each musical work which is performed in the NOISEROOM has been selected, edited and arranged for a listening situation in which the listeners can dedicate themselves to a maximum listening experience. The pieces presented in the NOISEROOM refer specifically to the concept of a so-called ‘speaker’ concert in contrast to a so-called ‘live’ concert. Each composition will be played back through a multi-channel 5.1 speaker setup that is configured according to the spatial acoustics of the NOISEROOM. The NOISEROOM is a project of Jan St. Werner, artistic director of STEIM and member of Mouse on Mars.

St Werner adapted electric harmoniums to create a subtle continuous sound that is every now and again disrupted by other noises that were recorded in the space, quietly harmonising and conflicting with the social setting.Casco archive

Starting from the idea of producing a remix album of Mouse on Mars in book-form, Jan St.Werner and Andi Toma, in conjunction with the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, asked over 30 artists, musicians, designers and scientists to document their imaginative responses to and associations with Mouse on Mars. They were invited to contribute works for the project without actually generating any sound. Inspired by the music of Mouse on Mars (to be viewed as ‘work in progress’ rather than something striving to be complete), ideas, sketches and designs were originated, which correspond to a fantastical, occasionally formal, but always personal analysis of what it means to experience music.
The exhibition featured works by Heike Baranowsky, Rosa Barba, Laurent Baudoux, Armin Boehm, Michel Carré, Katja Davar, Diango Hernández, Waseem Khan, Matthias Köchling, Dirk Königsfeld, Stefan Kozalla, Simon Lewis, Jean-François Moriceau & Petra Mrzyk, Soulis Moustakidis, Daniel Roth, Constantin Rothkopf, Silke Schatz, Christian Schwarzwald, Alice Stepanek/Steven Maslin, Leif Trenkler, Emmett Williams, Jo Zimmermann.kunsthalle-duesseldorf.de/

doku/fiction publication edited by Kunsthalle Düsseldorf 160 pages & CD 16.8 x 24 cm released: April 2004
ISBN: 3-89955-03-8
Softcover, incl. CD with 9 audio tracks by Mouse on Mars. Design by Frieda Luczak, Icon Communications Design, Cologne
Using Mouse on Mars’ songs, albums and concerts as inspiration, 37 artists, musicians, designers and academics have created commentaries, paintings, drawings and collages for this book. The results gathered here document the visual, artistic and theoretical contexts of modern electronic music as well as a range of personal interpretations of what it’s like to experience it. The book contains essays by author and journalist Dietmar Dath as well as Professor Siegfried Zielinski of the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne in addition to an interview of linguist and cyberneticist Oswald Wiener by Jan St. Werner. As an added bonus, the book includes an audio CD featuring 9 exclusive Mouse on Mars tracks referring to the production of the remix artworks. The concept for an accompanying exhibition was born out of the book project. It is held at the German museum Kunsthalle Duesseldorf from April 4 through June 27, 2004.doku/fiction publication

Comprised of unequal parts concert, exhibition, lecture and theatre play, “sound speaker” presents interdisciplinary performances highlighting the inconsequential and the unpredictable in music. The artists and performers take the stage and use sound itself as the medium to address questions of musical aesthetics, dynamics and logics.

“By learning with others you can get instant feedback from other creative minds (each bringing to the table different experiences and insights) DURING the learning process. This enables a kind of collective experience that can be drawn upon when internalizing information the first time. I don’t believe collective learning is stressed in the west. Performing music in a creative group is collective learning as is playing in a big band of some sort but I’m speaking now of collective learning in the more general and traditional concept of studying and conceptualizing together with others..” O. Coleman, “An Interview”“We came together to try out a kind of aesthetics of failure i.e. an aesthetics of the non-ability, of wanting and willing. And this is a very painful aesthetics, it is an aesthetics of embarrassment, blamage and renouncement. But as it is actually all about seizing an emotional affect on the listener and how it naturally feeds back as disgrace and how this embarrassment becomes a play of being taken away and feeling painful… ” Oswald Wiener on the occasion of the Berlin concert of “SELTEN GEHÖRTE MUSIK” 1974Dasarts archive. Please scroll down to view this project

The meshbox is a real-time sample-based drum sequencer designed for live performances. It allows the sampling of any soundsource on the fly and is syncable to midi. It’s using a junxion board to send controller data to a junxion software patch which translates the controller events into midi. A mac powerbook running LISA is used as sound giving device. The meshbox has been contrived by Jan St. Werner and was programmed by Frank Balde and designed by Jorgen Brinkmann at the STEIM workshop.